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Positive:
Story-wise: pretty good, interesting concept and the author really manages to live up to the expectations of the title.
Aliens: well done, with a very otherworldly feeling (for some species).

Negative:
Human characters: rather "nah" (mostly rich men who have lived for generations and are driven by money, power and sex. Female characters are primarily described in terms of hotness with few exceptions)
Sci-fi that relies heavily on gimmickry and detailed matter-of-factly explanations (not a big fan of this style of sci-fi)
I really disliked the ridiculously reckless and unmotivated story-line of a certain character (seriously, I think the author threw this in there solely to be able to spew out more alien settings to describe).

I'm about 2/3 through this book and I doubt that I'll finish it. I like the idea of it, but there were many aspects of it which I had difficulties accepting.

The reports that together make up most of the book don't feel authentic to me. Many of the central ideas in the book are explained through the reports as if introduced for the first time to whoever reads them. I found this a bit clumsy, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the basics of canopean society should be familiar to whoever reads these reports? E.g. the introduction of the SOWF which is central to the Canopean colonization process is introduced in a way that assumes that Canopeans are unfamiliar with it. Furthermore, the author explains that there is no proper word for the SOWF, which I'd assume that a civilization, which is entirely built up around the concept, should have a word for.

I also found it strange how the envoys go to such length to use neutral names of places and time periods for almost everything, but they have no problem using the Shikastan names of world war I and II to help the reader pin point the time in history. The only time that the Canopean name of this timeperiod is used, is when it is first introduced, after which all envoys revert to using the Shikastan name in their reports. Everything else uses the clumsy Canopean nomenclature.

I also had a problem grasping what was the point of many of the reports. The strange mix of explaining what happens on a global scale (including the awkward zone 6) with a few brief descriptions of some individuals.

The book does manage to reproduce the dryness of typical official reports, so I guess that's something.